How We Spend Our Day

August 11, 2009 By 5 Comments

A fascinating and richly detailed chart based on surveys of thousands of people of how they spend all the minutes of the day.

via The Daily Dish

Filed Under: Uncategorized 5 Comments
  • http://the-secular-thinker.blogspot.com/ The Secular Thinker

    Hey Daniel,

    Really neat chart there, many different conclusions could be drawn from the data.

    On another note, I wanted to get in contact with you with a philisophical issue I need some help on. I am trying to better understand the idea of logical absolutes, and the three laws of logic. I was wondering what you thought about this, how you would explain it, etc. If you had a post about this, please direct me to it, otherwise I would greatly appreciate an email or comment on my blog with your thoughts, as I am trying to better understand the Transcendental Argument for God, which is largely based upon the idea of logical absolutes. Thanks so much!

    -TST

  • http://freethoughtblogs.com/camelswithhammers/ Daniel Fincke

    I am not sure exactly how the argument works. I take it by three laws of logic and transcendentals you are referring to concepts like truth, being, beauty, and goodness which apply to things in multiple genera? How exactly does the argument you are thinking of attempt to move from these transcendentals to God? As their common source? Or is it that God is taken to be Beauty, Goodness, Truth, and Being itself all in one? (Like Plato’s Form of the Good)?

    Let me know what you’re thinking more specifically and in the meantime, thanks for ccoming by again, Tim.

  • http://the-secular-thinker.blogspot.com/ The Secular Thinker

    Well, the main source for the argument that I have been using is located at carm.org, located here:

    http://www.carm.org/secular-movements/atheism/transcendental-argument-existence-god

    Sorry for not being more clear. The three laws of logic that I was referencing are the Law of Identity, the Law of Non-Contradiction, and the Law of Excluded Middle.

    For example, the Law of Non-Contradiction states that an apple cannot be both an apple, and not an apple. The Transcendental Argument for God (TAG) attempts to posit that logic is a process of the mind, and that logic is based on these logical absolutes. They claim that the logical absolutes are conceptual by nature, asserting that anything conceptual requires a mind, and since humans did not create the logical absolutes, another, infinitely powerful mind did.

    I guess I am looking for your thoughts on the nature of the logical absolutes. I would agree that they exist. For example, I am a human, and I am not not a human. That can be considered logically sound and valid, resulting in it becoming a known truth. What do you think the source of these absolutes are? Are their conceptual? Physical? Something else? How do we know that logic isn’t illogical (it seems obvious, but I am looking for another opinion). Thanks for your time!

  • Dan Fincke

    Oh, I see. Well, my first inclination is to say that just because logical relations are perceivable by minds does not mean that they are created by minds any more than any other perceivable things require perceivers to grasp them.

    I have a hard time grasping how an “all powerful” mind could “create” logic. Before its act of creation (either chronologically or ontologically) was this mind both all-powerful AND not all-powerful? Was it able to violate this law of being before it “created” logic? That hardly makes any sense.

    You could say that the source of being is the source of logic too since being and the logic that tracks its necessary relationships come from the same source. Whatever it is that’s nature is simply to be and to lead to the existence of all else follows the “logic” which we abstractly formulate and call “logic.” But there could be a source of all being which unfolds its essence according to the laws we formulate as logic necessity without this logical creation being something that it “thinks up” as an all-powerful, immaterial Mind of some sort.

    On the other hand, we might be anti-realists and say that while logic is inviolable as far as our minds go, in some sense we must be skeptical about whether apart from the applications of our mind’s categories there are beings and logical relationships in “things-themselves.”

    And somewhere in all of this we must consider the difference between logical necessity and logical necessity.

    I hope this helps, what do you think?

  • http://the-secular-thinker.blogspot.com/ The Secular Thinker

    Thanks for the response Dan. You definitely have helped me understand this complex issue.

    “Before its act of creation (either chronologically or ontologically) was this mind both all-powerful AND not all-powerful? Was it able to violate this law of being before it “created” logic? That hardly makes any sense.”

    I think this is a very important point to consider. If this god created the rules of logic, why is it subject to them? Thanks again for the help!